Trip to voting booth could be longer soon

2-16-05

By Mark Binker, Staff Writer
News & Record

Guilford County wants to be one of 10 guinea pigs for a proposed experiment that would send voters to consolidated voting centers rather than traditional precincts on Election Day.

The county's board of elections voted 3-0 Tuesday to lobby for a spot as one of the 10 test counties should the state legislature authorize a test of the new procedure.

Voters in Guilford County reported to 159 individual voting precincts in November. Each precinct serves a defined geographic neighborhood.

If the test is approved, the county would set up a smaller number of voting centers. Each center would have more machines than a typical precinct.

The centers would be open during the two-week early voting period and would allow any voter to go to any center.

"There's no questions that the voting center method of voting can be done more efficiently," said Guilford County Elections Director George Gilbert. He said that the county would need fewer voting machines to carry out an election using the centers.

However, some voters will have to walk or drive farther to vote on Election Day, and some voters may not like giving up the precincts at which they've voted for years.

Board members said that one reason they would consider the voting center experiment is to mitigate the cost of putting proposed voter-verified paper ballot rules into place.

Those rules, which the state legislature is drafting but hasn't passed, would require each electronic voting machine to print a paper record of a voter's ballot.

Voters could review and verify the ballot before it is stored. Those paper records could then be used in case of a recount.

Gilbert told the board that the paper ballot requirements would likely force the county to buy new voting machines. He said the county's current machines would be difficult to retrofit with paper printers.

If the county were to stick with the 159-precinct format that it has used, the cost of replacing all the machines could be $7.7 million.

Under the voting center format, that cost would to about $2.6 million.

In other business, the board:

? set May 17 as the date for Summerfield's special election. The town will hold three referenda. Voters will decide whether to allow the town to open an ABC store, whether to allow liquor by the drink and whether to directly elect their mayor rather than allowing the Town Council to choose the mayor.

Early voting will be available at the downtown Greensboro elections office for two weeks before the election. On May 14, early voting will be available at Summerfield Elementary. The school will also be the only polling site open on Election Day.

? voted to keep open a case involving 441 ballots at issue in the contested election between county Commissioner Trudy Wade and John Parks. The ballots were cast on Election Day outside voters' home precincts.

A recent N.C. Supreme Court case ruled that those votes were illegal. But the state Superior Court and State Board of Elections have yet to rule on how to resolve the election.

The Guilford County board neglected to vote to keep the case open at their January meeting, something that parliamentary procedure would have normally required.

So the board members, lead by Chairman Jim Turner, voted to amend the minutes of that meeting. Those minutes now read that the board voted to keep the case open, despite the fact no such vote took place at that meeting.

Turner said the move was legal because it corrected an oversight, despite the fact it conflicts with a requirement in the law creating boards of elections that minutes be "current and accurate."